


should old acquaintance be forgot

by leiascully



Category: Seaward - Susan Cooper
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 17:52:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/298448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully





	should old acquaintance be forgot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [soleta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soleta/gifts).



Calliope has dreams. They're all she has left of her other life, the one she can't remember except in fragments of sleep-fogged dream. She spends her days studying and reading and taking long walks. She feels distanced from her old friends. She isn't lonely, exactly, but she always feels like she's waiting. There's something new in the wind. A sea change, she thinks, and isn't sure why it's always those words. She's restless; she tramps over the hills, feeling strong and certain, but when she stops moving, when she isn't traveling, she isn't quite certain what to do with herself.

Her aunt has come to stay, but it's as if they live out separate lives in the same house. Now and again they eat together, making sad attempts at small talk. Cally took her mother's mirror to her own room. That's the only change in the house, aside from the emptiness. Sometimes when she's alone, she runs her hands over the frame. The carved wood makes her palms tingle, but that's all. She's not certain what she expects, really, but she's always faintly disappointed.

She dreams of swimming. The water slides over her skin like silk, like joy. Lithe dark bodies flash by her: seals. They speak to her in barks of delight. She think she used to be able to understand them. Now it's only lovely burble in her ears, but she still loves the dreams. She somersaults through the waves, splashing and twisting. She stretches when she wakes up and can't help laughing from the joy of it all.

She misses her parents. She doesn't climb in the apple tree anymore. It only hurts her hands, after all, and it isn't the same without her father's gentle admonishments. The wind sighs in the pines and it _does_ sound like the sea, she knows it, only she can't remember when she saw the sea.

There are wisps of memories that drift through her mind sometimes. Dark hair blowing in the wind. A tower where everything looked like home. Glowing bones. Deep drifts of snow. The view from a high place. Well, she's always had a good imagination. It came with being an only child. She was a dreamy girl, her father said.

In her dreams, a creature made of sticks and light sings to her in its high mosquito whine of a voice. There are mountains then instead of the sea, though the warm breeze swirling around her is as silky as the water in the seal dream. She can smell flowers and dust. She feels loved and comforted, as if her parents are home again or as if someone whose face she can't quite remember has his arms around her. She wakes up completely refreshed.

Cally isn't unhappy and she isn't depressed. She's just waiting. She doesn't know what she's waiting for; she only knows she'll know it when she sees it. She feels as if she's holding her breath all of the time, preparing for the pivotal moment when her life will suddenly start to move again.

Her aunt worries, she knows. Cally sees it in the furrows in her aunt's brow, when they meet in the kitchen or the corridor. "Are you eating enough?" she asks, or "Why don't you go out with your friends this evening?"

They send her to a therapist for a bit, for something she said once about a lady taking her parents away. "Calliope," her aunt says, very gently, "you do know your parents are dead?"

"Of course," Cally says. "But she promised I'd see them again one day."

"Who promised you?" the therapist asks.

"The Lady," Cally begins, and then there's a name on the tip of her tongue, but it won't quite come out. "The Lady," she tries again, but again the name is lodged just behind her teeth. She hitches up her shoulders in frustration and rubs the rough skin of her palms.

"This sounds like the fantasy of a much younger child," she hears the therapist saying in a low voice to her aunt as they're leaving. "She seems very calm about it all, but I'm concerned that she's not really processing her grief. Maybe a change of scenery would be good, for a while."

So her aunt books tickets during Cally's holidays and bundles her off to Spain, to the sea, on the theory that fresh air will do her wonders. Cally mutter something about how Edwardian it all is, taking the waters, but her aunt insists.

It's wonderfully warm, at least, and she can take long walks on the beach just as easily as she could hike over the hills at home. Her aunt, reading under a parasol and sipping at a decorous glass of sangria, doesn't seem to mind. For hours she wanders along the shoreline, losing herself in the shush of surf and wind. She turns her face up to the sun and lets her skin get brown. The heat and the sand remind her of something she can't quite remember. She picks up seashells and puts them down again in places that please her better. They remind her of something too, something where the patterns mattered.

It is frustrating, having all these half-shuttered windows in her head. It's as if her memories are locked away, like the rooms in the house she doesn't go into anymore. She floats on the surface of her own mind, like the blossoms of the apple tree drifting on the wind when she shook them down with her climbing.

She rounds the curve of a cove and stops short. There's someone there, when she's barely seen anyone for hours. It's a boy, she thinks, though his dark hair is long enough to fall in his eyes. He has bare feet and his sleeves and his trouser legs are both rolled up on his lean brown arms and legs. He plunges a knife into the flat sand where the surf runs up the beach and quickly flips up a clod. He pulls something out of it and tosses it into a small pan already heaped with other clods. Cally cups a hand over her eyes and squints: they're not clods, they're clams. There's a small, nearly smokeless driftwood fire crackling away behind him. Perhaps he means to steam the clams and have a picnic on the beach. He doesn't look like the picnicking type, though. He's lean, with a slightly wild look about him, as if he'd spook off at the slightest noise. She wants to see his face; she can't explain why, but it's so important that she see his face.

She steps closer, one cautious foot at a time, not wanting to startle him, but he looks up suddenly, the whites of his eyes flashing like a hunted animal, and she bursts into tears and laughter all at once and can't say why. His eyes light up and he's tucking the knife away in one smooth motion and running across the hard sand to catch her in his arms and whirl her around. She holds onto him fiercely, as if she will never let go, and oh, there's such a comfort in their embrace. She's sobbing freely.

"Westerly," she says into his shoulder.

"Calliope," he says back, kissing her hair.

They hold onto each other for a long, long time, and then Westerly sets her down and steps back, taking her hands. They gaze at each other.

"Oh, West, how did you...how long have you...," she begins, but the look in his eyes is puzzlement. He says something she can't understand. His accent is perfectly beautiful and perfectly incomprehensible. He tries again and then stops, gesturing futilely.

"Oh," she says in disappointment, and he says her name again in his wonderful voice, love in every syllable. She tucks her head against his shoulder and they stand together, gazing out to sea, just holding onto each other. She listens to the music of his heartbeat and the quiet hush of his breath. They don't need words to say some things.

"Cally!" comes her aunt's voice, and Cally startles. She isn't sure how long she's been standing here in the curve of Westerly's arm, but it must have been quite a while.

"I have to go," she says. "I'll come back." She mimes going and coming, hoping it gets her meaning across. He watches her carefully and nods. She kisses his cheek and turns to dash down the beach, looking over her shoulder at him. Every time she looks, he's watching after her, until finally she can't see the cove or him anymore.

"There you are," her aunt scolds as Cally skids to a stop. "Where have you been? We've nearly been and missed dinner."

"Sorry," Cally says breathlessly. She eats ravenously for the first time in months, thinking of Westerly on the beach with his clams. She hopes he isn't cold. It's a warm night, but she worries. He's survived worse, she knows, but not often when she had the power to change that. She thinks of taking him a blanket, at least, but her aunt keeps a sharp eye on her for the rest of the evening, and eventually Cally goes reluctantly up to bed.

That night she dreams of Lugan. He stands before her, solemn but kindly, like somebody's stern grandfather. "Calliope," he greets her.

"Lugan," Cally says. "I remember you."

"For now," he tells her. "You were losing hope, Calliope. I wanted to remind you that you are of my people, and that Westerly is also. You'll find each other again one day, when things will go a little easier. But for now, both of you needed a taste of hope. It will be a long road."

"I won't see him again?" Cally says, her hands clenching into loose fists. The skin on her palms itches.

"Not for a while," Lugan says. "I brought you together today so that you would know that it was more than a dream. Westerly needed a moment of solace as much as you did. The waking world is full of magic, but you must find your own ways to see it. My power is limited."

"Can we not go back?" she asks plaintively, knowing it's an impossibility. "Can we not go back to your land, where at least we understood each other?"

"I'm sorry," Lugan says gently. "You chose this world, both of you. I promise you will find each other in better days. And my land is also the land of the Lady Taranis, who will have you both one day, but not yet. Not yet." He looks fierce, and Cally thinks back to a dragon carved of wood, and also, for some reason, to Snake. "For now, you are under my protection, but you must make your way in this world. But I can give you one gift to help you along. I can give you back your grief."

"I miss Peth," she says. "How will my grief help me?"

"You can't stay in the same place forever, Calliope," Lugan says. "You must grow and change and move. You must be brave. You must face the world on its own terms." He cups his hand over the top of her head. "I give you your grief, to strengthen you. I give you back the strength you found in my world, and the pain. I give you back the joy and the fear."

She wakes up and thinks, _My parents are dead and they will never come home_ and begins to cry. She cries for a very long time, muffling her tears in the pillow, but in the morning she feels stronger, different. She doesn't feel as if she is swaddled in cotton wool anymore, insulated from her own thoughts. She chats with the other guests at the hotel over bread and butter at breakfast. Her aunt remarks upon the change in her and Cally smiles and changes the subject. She takes a walk down the beach, hoping but not expecting to find Westerly, but she isn't surprised when she can't find the cove again. She hopes that he's all right, wherever he is. She takes a deep breath of salt air and holds it until her lungs ache, and then she lets it out noisily.

For now, she'll go back and find her aunt, and she'll swim in the sea and think of seals and of life. She'll feel the sun on her skin and the salt in her hair and she'll let the water soothe her hands. Tomorrow they'll go home, and she won't be waiting anymore. Tomorrow she'll find a plan. She's alone now, and somewhere, Westerly is alone, but one day they'll be together. Lugan promised her, and what's more, she's promising herself.

Still, before she goes back to the waking world, she draws a compass rose with her bare toes in the wet sand, pointing west.


End file.
